Israel completed the installation of a new watchtower checkpoint at a key entrance to the Old City of Jerusalem on Thursday, angering Palestinian residents of the city.

The checkpoint is one of three that Israel began to install last month at Damascus Gate, and residents say they are aimed at further preventing Palestinians’ access to the Old City.

On Wednesday night, Israeli police and soldiers blocked Palestinian residents of the Old City from entering via Damascus Gate and began bringing in construction materials to build the checkpoint.

Another two concrete checkpoints are being built at the top of the gate’s stairs.

Construction at the Damascus Gate area – one of the most popular entrances used by Palestinians – started a month after US President Donald Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

It involved digging and uprooting trees and installing surveillance cameras equipped with sound detectors at the gate, according to witnesses.

The area around Damascus Gate – which Palestinians call Bab al-Amoud – is a popular spot where Palestinians gather, drink coffee and sing national songs as a form of civil protest. It has also been the site of more formal demonstrations and violent clashes between protesters and Israeli police.

In October 2015, during a wave of violence sparked by political tensions, Palestinian youths attempted to stab Israeli military police in separate incidents near the gate. They were often shot and killed, with footage of the stabbing attempts going viral.

Since then, the Israeli military has used temporary checkpoints made of plastic sheets and scaffolding to stop and search Palestinians at random using the gate.

Israeli Prime Minister said last June that he was considering instructing authorities to turn the area into a “sterile” zone after a guard was stabbed to death there.

Mahdi Abdul Hadi, the head of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA) based in Jerusalem, told MEE: “The checkpoints at Damascus Gate are aimed at paralysing any Palestinian social, religious and youthful movements in this site.

He added: “What we are witnessing are military and police procedures, under the umbrella of security, to push out Palestinians from their city.”

In May 2017, Unesco issued a resolution which affirms the importance of the Old City and its walls for the three monotheistic religions.

The UN special envoy for Syria has given warning that violence in the country is the worst he has seen since taking the job four years ago.

Staffan de Mistura’s remarks on Wednesday came as the US and Russia again traded blame at the UN over the ongoing conflict.

“Civilians have been killed on a horrific scale – reports suggest more than 1,000 civilians in the first week of February alone,” he told the UN Security Council.

“I have been now four years as the special envoy. This is as violent and worrying and dangerous a moment as any that I have seen in my time of tenure so far.”

De Mistura mentioned all the countries now fighting in Syria, including the Turkish operation around Afrin and the Syrian government’s continued bombardment of Eastern Ghouta and Idlib.

He talked of developments in recent days, including the US attack on Assad’s forces near Deir Az Zor and Israeli air attacks in Syria including on Iranian targets. But both these operations were later defended by Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN.

“The United States will always reserve the right to act in self-defence. The [Syrian President Bashar al-Assad] regime has become a front for Iran, Hezbollah, and their allies to advance the irresponsible and dangerous agenda for the Middle East,” she told the Security Council.

She criticised Russia for failing to stop the Assad regime from bombing and gassing civilians, drawing a sharp response from Moscow’s permanent representative to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia.

Nebenzia said the US and its allies should use their influence over the opposition groups to prevent violence.

Meanwhile, the UN’s latest modest peace effort based on the outcome of a conference in the Russian city of Sochi seems now to be in doubt.

De Mistura wants to select members of a new committee to come up with a new constitution for Syria. But Syria’s ambassador at the UN rejected that.

“Participants of the conference did not lend any authority for Mr De Mistura to set up this committee,” said Bashar al-Jaafari, the Syrian diplomat.

Earlier on Wednesday, the first convoy of aid since November was delivered to Eastern Ghouta, east of Damascus.

Diplomats point to a familiar and cynical pattern by the Syrian government. It is only when Syria is in the international spotlight; a small amount of aid is finally delivered.

Aid also reached Deir Az Zor, which was liberated in November last year from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).

Abdirahman Meygag, deputy director of the World Food Programme in Syria, told Al Jazeera from Damascus on Thursday that his team visited the city two days earlier for the first time since 2014.

“The majority of the city is uninhabitable, 80 percent of the city has been destroyed,” he said.

“We have seen that there is no electricity, the majority of people depend on generators. Water is not running. The sewage system is disfunctional.”

He also said that the majority of the people depended on foreign assistance.

“For a year and a half, the UN has been doing airdrop operations in Deir Az Zor city. We kept the people alive there.

However, the city needs more than that and we are there to assist. We need to step up our operations.”

The Israeli occupation authorities started work on a new multipurpose museum project near the western wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Wednesday, Quds Press has reported.

Known to Jews as the “Western (or Wailing) Wall” and to Muslims as the “Buraq Wall”, the museum is being built in East Jerusalem and so has the same illegal status in international law as Israeli settlements scattered all over the occupied city and West Bank.

The government-supervised Museum of Beit HaLiba is said to include cinema screening rooms, a library for tourists, a tourism information centre and a police station.

According to one Palestinian specialist in Jerusalem affairs, the occupation authorities are working to change the identity of the holy city.

The museum, Jamal Amro pointed out, is being built on the ruins of a Muslim neighbourhood. “Israel’s new settlement projects like this are trying to create different tourist routes which guarantee that foreign visitors do not see the Islamic sites in Jerusalem,” he explained. “Tourists will only be shown around Jewish synagogues and tunnels.”

Amro warned of many similar settlement projects that the occupation authorities could start near Al-Aqsa Mosque.

He noted that the Israeli-controlled municipality of Jerusalem has announced 50 settlement projects since the US recognition of the city as Israel’s capital in December.

Last June, the Israeli government approved a budget to build and develop Al-Buraq Plaza. That particular scheme includes an archaeological dig, improved transportation facilities and cultural activities for Jewish students and soldiers.

Egyptian teacher Najlaa Mohammed, who was accused of causing the death of Kuwaiti student Issa al-Balushi at a school in Kuwait, revealed the details of the incident and provided evidence of her innocence.

Najlaa told Al Arabiya.net that a few days before al-Balushi’s death, she strictly asked students in her class to take their seats, but only he didn’t. She then asked him to stand by the board but, he refused, left the class and headed to the school supervisor’s office.

According to Najlaa, the supervisor then sent for her to understand what happened after which al-Balushi accused her of lying. The supervisor informed Najlaa that she would summon the student’s mother the next day to explain the situation.

Najlaa noted that she did not know that al-Balushi was a special needs student and that he had undergone three heart surgeries, adding that she did not sign any documents to prove that she was informed of his condition.

She added that al-Balushi was absent the next day, but his mother came and began arguing and yelling at Najlaa.

The mother said she would file a complaint against Najlaa at the ministry as her son’s psychological state was affected due to the way she abused him.

School officials intervened to reconcile Najlaa and al-Balushi’s mother, but the latter refused. On her way to submit the complaint, her housekeeper called her and told her that while the boy was blowing up balloons to prepare for national day celebrations, he fell and lost consciousness.

Medical examinations showed that he had exerted a lot of effort blowing the balloons which affected the heart muscle, leading to his death.

The doctor’s report showed that the death was due to natural causes and that it happened the day after the incident with his teacher.

Najlaa said police interrogated her, but the school’s testimony was in her favour which lead the police to release her.

She added that she never abused al-Balushi and that she’s worked in the school for 12 years with no problems with anyone.

The Daesh terrorists captured by the opposition groups in north western Syrian province of Idlib confessed their collaboration with the regime of Bashar Al-Assad, sources from the military wing of the opposition group said Wednesday.

Several opposition groups fighting regime forces in Idlib captured 400 Daesh terrorists on Tuesday when attempting to infiltrate into a de-escalation zone in the city.

In the initial interrogation, the Daesh terrorists said that Russian and regime forces had hit the opposition from the air but had not targeted Daesh members advancing from Hama to Idlib, the sources told Anadolu Agency on a condition of anonymity.

The opposition groups kept the location of the detained Daesh terrorist secret because of the possibility of the regime and its supporters’ attack to block their confessions, they added.

However, Anadolu Agency was able to capture images of some terrorists while being shifted from one place to another.

Idlib falls within a network of de-escalation zones — endorsed by Turkey, Russia and Iran — in which acts of aggression are expressly prohibited.

Syria has only just begun to emerge from a devastating conflict that began in 2011 when the Assad regime cracked down on demonstrators with unexpected ferocity.

Israel has sent the family of Abdullah Ghneimat, a Palestinian in his early twenties who was crushed to death by an Israeli army jeep, a bill for $28,000 for damage caused to the vehicle which killed him.

The incident occurred at around 4am on 14 June 2015 as Ghneimat was walking home from work in the West Bank town of Kufr Malek, northeast of Ramallah.

The Israeli vehicle reportedly flipped over while conducting military activities in the area, trapping Ghneimat underneath. Al Jazeera reports that Ghneimat was “denied medical attention for over three hours and bled to death under the vehicle.”

The Israeli Ministry of Defence says that Ghneimat threw a Molotov cocktail at the vehicle, meaning the state is thus “immune from prosecution” regarding the killing.

The Ghneimat family has been engaged in a protracted legal battle since they filed a lawsuit against the Israeli soldiers who were driving the vehicle six months after Ghneimat’s death. The Israeli Ministry of Defence then filed a countersuit against the family, the latest development of which is the $28,000 bill for damages to the jeep.

According to Shawan Jabarin, director of independent Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq, the billing of Palestinian families for damages is part of a new strategy by the Israeli authorities to punish Palestinians for any form of resistance.

He told Al Jazeera: “I think they’re heading to a level where anyone who utters the word ‘occupation’ can be arrested, harassed and possibly fined.”

Iyad Ghneimat, Abdullah’s father, told Middle East Eye that he did not hold much hope for a fair trial. He lamented: You know, not once in their existence have the Israeli courts given a fair and just trial to any Palestinian […] we would be lying to ourselves if we say there was a real chance for justice.

The possibility of Palestinians receiving compensation for harm caused to them by Israeli forces is becoming increasingly unlikely, according to a 2017 report by Israeli Human Rights organisation B’tselem.

The report found that from 2012 to 2016, Israel paid an average of 3.8 million shekels (around $1 million) in compensation, a decline of more than 80 per cent from the 1997 to 2001 period. This has led to a drop of nearly 95 per cent in the number of Palestinians filing new claims in the courts, the report noted.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza Strip said that the number of surgeries that have been delayed in Gaza has reached 500 on Wednesday after hygiene services have stopped in all Gaza hospitals.

In a press statement, spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Gaza Strip, Ashraf Qedra, said that the reason for the suspension of hygiene services was the lack of a safe healthy environment for the fourth day in a row in health facilities.

He added that dental services and laboratory examinations had declined due to the discontinuation of hygiene services in primary care centres.

It is worth noting that the companies responsible for hygiene stopped working in Gaza Strip hospitals because they have not been paid for the fifth month in a row now.

Israel’s Ofer military court has extended the detention of the Palestinian teen Ahed Tamimi and her mother until 11 March.

The judge passed down the ruling in a closed session, in which only a few members of the family were allowed to attend.

On 19 December 2017 Israeli forces arrested the then 16-year-old during a night raid on her house in the occupied West Bank village of Nabi Saleh. A video of Ahed confronting occupation forces who had been stationed on her family’s land had gone viral on social media.

Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman vowed to arrest and punish the Palestinian child and all those who appeared with her in the video; her mother and her cousin.

Amnesty International has called on the Israeli authorities to release Ahed, who has been in prison for nearly a month. While an international petition calling for her release has gathered support from celebrities, academics and human rights activists.